The Liberal Democrats

The cheery gloom of the Liberal Democrats

HERE is my print column this week, looking back at the rather odd mood at the Liberal Democrats' annual conference:

SHORT of installing an organ and stuffed ravens, the annual conference of the Liberal Democrats, held in Birmingham this week, could scarcely have plumbed greater depths of Gothic gloom. Speech after speech talked of global crisis, painful choices and the horrors of coalition with the Conservatives. Yet simultaneously, members of Britain's third party—usually a fractious bunch—seemed in a splendid mood. There were both good and bad reasons for this paradoxical good cheer.

First prize for gloom went to the business secretary Vince Cable, who told delegates that the country faced a crisis that was “the economic equivalent of war”. The party's president Tim Farron—a blokeish populist who, given a guitar, would make a fine youth-club leader or rather irritating vicar—apologised to hundreds of Lib Dems who lost council seats at elections in May (or, as he put it, “got their backsides kicked”). At the same time delegates were both upbeat and unusually disciplined, voting down an attempted revolt over health policy, and in one meeting applauding their leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg so warmly he joked it felt like North Korea.

This was odd. The day the party went into coalition with the Tories, it lost a great mass of voters, the “eco-pacifist lefties” as one adviser puts it, who had thought the Lib Dems a left-wing alternative to New Labour. It lost a further mass of students when the coalition allowed universities to triple tuition fees (breaking a Lib Dem election pledge). Not much has improved since: the party's current poll ratings range between single figures and 13%.

At Birmingham, the mood of calm extended to both grassroots Lib Dems and the sleeker, suits-and-smartphones crowd around Mr Clegg. Dig beneath the surface, and the two groups offer very different rationales for their optimism.

The grassroots (and their idols) say they are in good heart, above all, because they have “been here before”. As Lord Ashdown, a former leader, reminded activists, in 1989 his party's poll rating was briefly an asterisk, meaning too small to measure with confidence. Or, in the words of Mr Farron (a popular favourite, tipped as a future leader): “been there, bought the T-shirt.”

That is wrong. The Lib Dems have not been here before. At previous low points, the party's big problem was irrelevance. They have a wholly new problem now. Lots of voters hate them, and think they have sold out for a perch in a ministerial Jaguar.

Another big source of grassroots cheer is that Lib Dem bigwigs have started attacking the Conservatives, ending an initial truce during which Mr Clegg's team stressed coalition unity to reassure voters that hung parliaments did not spell chaos. This “differentiation” began when Mr Clegg seized an unmissable chance to rough up the Tories over a botched health reform.

At Birmingham, ambitious figures, notably from the party's social-democratic wing, called the Tories “reactionary” and predicted that a “divorce” is “inevitable” (Mr Farron); warned Tories not to “slaver over tax cuts for the rich” (Chris Huhne, the energy secretary); and implied that David Cameron's top policy wonk takes a Dickensian villain's view of workers' rights (Mr Cable).

Many Lib Dems argue that Tory-bashing is good politics, and long overdue. It is true that differentiation does have a strategic aim: persuading voters that the Lib Dems are not powerless puppets in a Tory government. But those same Lib Dems underestimate the emotional temptations to which they are giving way.

The Lib Dems think it unfair that they are hated. They think (rightly) that inconclusive election results and a mood of national crisis made joining the Tories in the coalition last year the responsible thing to do. They can tolerate self-sacrifice: Lib Dems enjoy the moral high ground. What they cannot bear is that many on the left suspect them of enjoying high office. At one fringe meeting, Mr Huhne was asked how he planned to spend his “30 pieces of silver”. That explains why attacks on the Tories cheer Lib Dems so: they can live with being martyrs, but not with being thought Judases (especially when many, if not most, would prefer a coalition with Labour).

The better sort of good cheer

The grassroots, in short, are cheerful for alarmingly self-regarding reasons. The optimism around Mr Clegg is more calculating, and more focused on the world outside the party tribe. True, at the start of his leader's speech in Birmingham, Mr Clegg paid mawkish tribute to his party's “grace under fire”. But within the leader's inner circle, the focus is economic: the fate of the party, the coalition and Britain's economy are seen as indivisible. That means those months spent stressing coalition unity are still regarded as invaluable. Before bed each night in Birmingham, one senior Clegg aide checked ten-year government bond yields. That they did not budge was seen as a triumph: a sign that bond markets trust the Lib Dems to stick with the coalition's economic plans, for all the noisy Tory-bashing.

Come the next general election, the Clegg camp believes that Labour will have less economic credibility than the coalition. They also hope that within the coalition, the Lib Dems will be seen as more compassionate than the Tories—and as less in hock to powerful interests, from trade unions to bankers, than either big party. But coalition credibility comes first. Hence Mr Clegg's fierce assault on Labour in his speech, urging voters: “never, ever trust Labour with our economy again.”

That passage was greeted with only polite applause. Rank-and-file Lib Dems were much more excited by a bit that praised their party as being in nobody's pockets (Mr Clegg had to hush them, saying “Okay, I get it, you agree”). To survive and prosper, the Lib Dems need to be more strategic, and less keen on cheering themselves. Mr Clegg gets that better than his party.

Readers' comments

You say:
"To survive and prosper, the Lib Dems need to be more strategic, and less keen on cheering themselves."

You may be right but I never heard that stopping any successful political party in any country. Parties that come away from conferences miserable don't generally do well the rest of the year.

As for the content, the bet on austerity now is looking more risky by the day, and by each IMF pronouncement. Recovery in 1997 was not enough to save the Conservatives after the debacle of Black Wednesday and if the LibDem leadership's faith in 10 year bond yields turns out to be misplaced then there will not be much left to say for its part in the Coalition

In this blog, our Bagehot columnist surveys the politics of Britain, British life and Britain's place in the world. The column and blog are named after Walter Bagehot, an English journalist who was the editor of The Economist from 1861 to 1877. The blog is currently on hiatus after a change of Bagehot columnist.